Wednesday, December 23, 2009

My final set of cookies before Christmas. These were made for family and co-workers. I have to work on Christmas Day.....so I thought I'd brighten the day of all of us that have to work on probably the most precious day of the year.

I wanted to make some unique cookies from those I've done all December......but I did make some of the "old favorites" too. ;-)

I have a FABULOUS tree cutter that I purchased from Ecrandal Originals that I've hesitated to use before because it us HUGE. But for family where I am taking platters, I thought it would be fun to use some of the larger cutters to make centerpiece type cookies. Here's the trees (about 7" tall!) in my favorite designs.

Here's some minis of one of my fav tree designs, plus holly that was inspired by Cookie Artisan.

I made some small "gingerbread" houses....

Simple presents....

Fun Christmas tags......I love how these turned out!

Fireplace with stockings......my husband tells me I need to work on the fire. : /

A giant gingerbread house......this house is 7" tall and so much fun to do. :-) My inspiration came from Johnna and Fantabulous Goodies

A little bit of everything. :-)

We are celebrating Christmas Eve tonight since I have to work Christmas Day.....so I'm off to be with my family and enjoy the season. Merry Christmas to you all! Thanks for following my blog and being such wonderful friends. :-))))))))))

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

It's my son, Neil's, 21st birthday today. I made him some special cookies as he is still away at college. (In fact, today is a finals day for him.) I thought these might brighten his day despite having to take a final on his birthday.

He just received them in the mail (YAY.....they arrived on his birthday!) and so now I can let everyone else see them too. :-)

I had hoped to make more Christmas cookies this week....but I've been so sick that I just couldnt' get up the desire and/or energy to do it. Hopefully I make some more next week right before Christmas to take to the family, etc.

Saturday, December 12, 2009

I decorated my little heart out yesterday. I had big, big plans.....but they petered out when I start coming down with a cold. :-( I kept adding to the stack of cookies I wasn't going to decorate. lol By the time I cleaned up the mess......I was crawling to bed. Then I had to get up at 4 AM and go to work this morning. Ugh.

Sickness or no......I still had fun decorating. I repeated some of my favs from last time, but added some new ones too.

I bought some disco dust from Country Kitchen SweetArt and boy was it fun to use! It's kind of pricey......and you gotta be careful since "glitter" goes everywhere when you open it.....but oh how cool the effects are. It was hard to capture the effects in a photo.....but I think this one does it best.

Larger stockings.......I still love putting white sanding sugar on the top. :-) In hindsight.....I like those little white stitches on the bottom left one....wish I'd added it to all the others......

I went out on a limb and tried something different with one of the trees. My daughter said I was "getting all modern" on her. :-) (She loves modern decor......I don't. lol)

Plaid trees with a black outline.....I like em! ;-)

I was anxious to use the huge Christmas tree cutter I must have purchased after Christmas last year. I love the limbs on this one. I tried out some of the same designs as last time. I love Christmas trees! (funny......I have six artificial trees decorated throughout my house, so I guess I'm tree crazie too)

My new JOY cutter from Karen's Cookies. It's a little smaller than I would have liked, but it is still cute. :-)

Larger mittens.....yay! I love these so much. :-))))))))

And here's a whole family of snowmen. I had fun doing all the "Christmas" scarves.

I hope to have another big cookie session on Wednesday. Hopefully this cold moves swiftly out of my body and our house in the next few days. :-)

Tuesday, December 8, 2009

A friend ordered a ton of cookies to give as Christmas gifts. I was happy to make them for her yesterday. Plus I got to try out all my larger cutters (remember last week I did minis only) and see what I could do. I had a blast yesterday.....even though my poor foot was screaming by evening. : /

It was fun to try larger versions of the cookies I made last week. I went to town with my Christmas trees since I was decorating more than a dozen of them. I have FOUR versions. hee hee

Candy canes and gingers.......just the ordinary designs, but still fun.

These presents are not my best work.....but I think I know how to improve them for next time. I love the plaid wrapping paper. ;-)

Christmas lights......these are about five times bigger than the ones I made last week. Notice I only have six in the photo. I was able to get a whole string of minis in one photo last week. :-) The base of these were MUCH easier to do compared to those teeny tiny ones.....

I love how the blue striped scarves came out on these snowmen. :-)))))))

OK......here come the trees. They are all distinctively different. I don't know what came over me, but I couldn't quite trying new things.

Plaid, of course............you know the fad I'm in right now :-)

A more modern version. I LOVE how these turned out. I used a graphic I saw. Fun fun!

I've seen this string of lights version on CC and Flickr.

Patchwork trees.....I know you are SO surprised. :-)

Can you tell I love lots of colors? Look at this festive group of cookies. =)

Close up.......

I'll be decorating again Friday. I've got to get in as many decorating sessions as possible since Christmas will be here in just 17 days! Yikes......so many cookies, so little time. lol

Friday, December 4, 2009

So today was the day......we'd been preparing for it for more than a week now. My very good (and brave!) friend, Pam, came over so that she and I, plus my two daughters, Jill & Allison, could make gingerbread houses.

Yesterday was a rough day baking the gingerbread......long story. Then, this morning I was having lots of trouble separating eggs for the royal icing, etc etc. I was ready to give up. Thankfully, I didn't. We spent about 5 hours assembling and decorating FOUR gingerbread houses......but we finally did it, and they turned out so cute. I proud of my dear daughters as they dove in and made their own houses.

Jill & Allison are assembling Allison's house. Pam (my friend) taught Jill how to do it with the first three houses they put together, so Jill was such an expert that she could help her sister do hers when she got home from college later in the morning.

Jill & Allison helped me put my roof on. We had such a good time together. :-)

I am working diligently to make the Cookie Crazie Shoppe gingerbread style!!!!

What a mess we made......and candy galore, oh my. My kids had a feast after we got done. Ugh......full of sugar. :-)

Here's the Cookie Crazie Shoppe. :-) I don't know if you can see the oreo cookie roof and the mini oreos I used on the steps, in the "mailbox" pole, and on the big tree up front. I wish I would have had lots of other cookies to put all over it. ( I sold all my minis from Monday, so I didn't have those to put on the shoppe.) Maybe next year.....

Here's the back of my house. Notice the funky fruity twizzler "bush" and the air head extreme "bush". ;-)

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

I decided to make a whole batch of mini Christmas cookies since I needed some minis for our church's Treat the Troops packing party this Wednesday. We're sending our boxes of Christmas treats to the soldiers nice and early. :-) We are supposed to put six cookies in each sandwich bag......but I've found that six of my normal cookies can not quite fit into one of those bags. SO.......I figured six minis would work perfectly.

I've been collecting mini cutters for a few weeks....from Karen's Cookies, Michaels and Hobby Lobby. I ended up with SIXTEEN different shapes that I wanted to use. Oh boy.....this is where the crazie part begins.

Just so you know......my normal batch of cookies makes almost 300 mini cookies!!!! (They are all about 1 to 1 1/2 " in size.)

Yesterday was the big decorating day since the cookies needed to be dry by tomorrow (Wed). I figured that since they were minis and I was going to "try" to not make them less detailed....that they wouldn't take me as long to decorate. Guess what?.....I was wrong. lol

So here's my parade of mini Christmas cookies. They were SUPER fun to do, and I can't wait to make them several more times in the next few weeks and perfect the designs. There's a few of them that I probably won't make again either because they require too much detail or they were way too plain.

Stars....candy canes....bells. The candy cane is tiny.....and some how I think it might break if it were sent to Iraq. ;-)

Ornaments......lots of them. (You can always tell when I had trouble deciding which photo I liked better of certain cookies....hee hee...but they were just so photogenic, I tell ya!)

Awww......I love these little guys. :-)

Lots of pretty packages....

Gingers and their teeny tiny houses. lol

Stockings.....see what I mean about that white sanding sugar. It makes them look fluffy on top. I love that effect!

Christmas light bulbs......I had a blast decorating them AND taking pics of them. ;-)

Who knows how many pics I took of the whole group! Hopefully the two below capture the essence of the entire mini collection. :-))))))

This might be my first set of 2009 Christmas cookies.....but I don't expect it will be my last. I've got a bunch of great ideas for regular sized cookies.

They will have to wait until next week though, since we are building gingerbread houses on Friday. Ohhhhhh.....I can hardly wait. My girls and I are each building our own house. I'll be sure to post pics so you can see our handy work.